


Of Ghosts and Regrets

by MyGhostJustYells



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Amelda and Siegfried are mentioned too, Character Study, Family Issues, Gen, Seto's emotionally maturing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26739580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyGhostJustYells/pseuds/MyGhostJustYells
Summary: As Seto Kaiba matures, he looks back on his attitude towards Noah and realizes how at odds it is with his soft spot for children.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	Of Ghosts and Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Of Ghosts and Regrets  
> Author: MyGhostJustYells  
> Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters  
> Rating: G  
> Warning(s): None.  
> Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! or its characters. They belong to Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, TV Tokyo, and other licensors and distributors. This is a not-for-profit fan work.
> 
> Author's Note: Just something I noticed and decided to explore a little bit.

He had been so (justifiably) pissed off about the whole thing, which had been readily apparent in just about every single interaction he’d had with his adopted brother Noah in the short time they’d known each other.

And then well after the fact, the guilt had settled in.

Seto Kaiba couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, this had happened. Mokuba had mentioned Noah at dinner the other night with a melancholy look on his face – could that have been it? Maybe it had come up in one of his many dreams, most of which he… actively tried not to remember. For all he knew, his mind had drifted randomly to the subject during a dull meeting at work and been unable to escape it ever since.

He supposed it didn’t matter. The trigger wasn’t nearly as important as the realizations it had brought.

The burning hatred he’d felt for Noah at the time had been truly astonishing. How dare that entitled brat have ground his tournament to a halt, kidnapped them into a virtual simulation, dredged up incredibly painful memories from the past, brainwashed Mokuba, insisted he was superior just because of his birth and computer-like brain, and, finally, attempted to murder them all. Even when the missile had exploded, killing both Noah and Gozaburo for good, Seto didn’t recall feeling anything approaching sorrow.

But he’d _also_ decided to do something a long time ago – to bring joy into the lives of children who had little. For him, that had taken the form of building theme parks where kids without parents could come play for free. It was a dream that had been with him since back when he’d been a kid with nothing, and he was determined to see it made real.

And Noah _had_ been just a kid, hadn’t he? A child who had never known differently than what his father taught him, who had died at ten years old, had his mind uploaded into a computer without his consent, and then been abandoned when he was of no more use. Just as much a victim of Gozaburo as he and Mokuba. Mokuba had seen that so easily and acted upon it, but Seto hadn’t.

He shook his head in a vain attempt to dislodge those thoughts from it, attempting to focus back on the monster sketches for the new virtual reality game he was designing.

How would his life have turned out differently, if Noah hadn’t been hit by that car? Or worse, if his adopted father had gone with his first plan? If Noah had lived, the two of them would have grown up together, their entire lives a competition against one another. If Gozaburo had chosen to go ahead with his plan to put Noah’s mind into Seto’s body, Seto might have been the one trapped in that virtual world. Or worse, killed when his consciousness was overtaken or destroyed.

It all sent unbidden spikes of horror through him whenever he thought of it. Gozaburo Kaiba had truly been a monster.

One of the worst realizations from this storm of thoughts was something both Noah and Gozaburo had implied while they were all in the virtual world – that perhaps Gozaburo had actually intended to bring Seto home from the orphanage that day. Gozaburo was intelligent, he could have done his research. After all, Seto looked just like Noah. What better rival, or “container,” for his son?

Seto pulled up that fateful chess match in his head, carefully recalling every move, every detail, every expression on Gozaburo’s face. Had Gozaburo thrown the game? Had he simply not given the match his full effort? Had Seto’s gall, his determination, proved to Gozaburo that he was worthy? Or had his studious review of Gozaburo’s prior chess matches truly been the deciding factor, as he’d always believed it had?

Seto wasn’t sure he would ever know which of those possibilities was the truth, and that alone made him mad enough to throw the sketches he was working on across his office in irritation.

He, and no other, had been responsible for his successes in life. He hadn’t been responsible for the misfortunes that had befallen Noah either.

Frustrated by all of this, Seto Kaiba began chasing a ghost. Why? He didn’t know. For answers? For closure? Because Mokuba wanted him to? Because it was the right thing to do?

At first, he did it out of practicality. He wanted to make sure nothing of Gozaburo’s doing remained in KaibaCorp’s computer systems. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was nothing. His own work as well as the work of his technicians had been thorough. But then he decided to go through the wreckage of the underwater base they had just finished collecting as part of the necessary cleanup efforts KaibaCorp was spearheading in the wake of… all the structures that had been destroyed during Battle City.

As he parsed through the rubble, trying to see what he could find, reflection came, unwanted.

In the face of Amelda’s hypocrisy, he’d mocked the other man’s pain. He’d been furious at Siegfried’s attempts to sabotage his tournament and his company, in spite of the desperation that had driven the other man to do it. And then of course there was Noah. Noah, a _child_ who had arguably lived a _worse_ life than Seto had, all because of the same man. Noah had never even had a chance to be his own person, raised and molded from birth to be a vessel for his father’s ambitions.

In hindsight and his developing maturity, Seto Kaiba did feel empathy towards each and every one of them, knowing they were little different from him, but in the heat of the moment he never seemed to be able to overlook the intense emotions he felt at how they had the _nerve_ to challenge him. He thought wryly of the many times others had accused him of being cold and unemotional. He seemed to have the exact opposite problem.

_He_ was no less hypocritical than the rest of them.

His turbulent thoughts swirled to a stop as he noticed something buried under a steel bulkhead, warped in the explosion.

Was that a…?

Huh.

Maybe enough of Noah’s system still remained to be salvageable after all.

Once he got done with this, maybe he should consider getting in touch with Amelda and Siegfried too.


End file.
